Some of you might remember, that I painted my first version of Sha´un in 2014, which feels like a long time ago. I really love this bust (as I do the whole beastmen topic) and I was there when Raffa started the sculpt. We were joking back then, that this would be a bust especially designed for my painting style and indeed it felt like this. But sometimes feeling and reality differ from each other.

The first version of Sha´un was a hard piece of work. I struggled a lot while painting it and almost got lost, before I finally managed to finish it. In mid 2016 I decided, I would do a second version. I was triggered by the new Beastmen fraction in Warhammer Total War and the awesome artworks to find there:

Combined with the upcoming class in Arvika, its famous wildlife and dark woods, I felt to be in the right mood to get started. This was my result after three days of painting:

As you can see, the WIP and the final outcome are completely different. So, what happened? Deep in myself I was not happy with the result I brought back from Arvika. It had not the brutal, animalistic touch I wanted to achieve. It felt strange to look at the bust and I lost the motivation to carry on. And here, I made the great mistake: Instead of analysing my problem and work out a solution, I simply left the scene and put the bust back into the cabinet.

Today I know, that this point is my biggest problem, when it comes to painting. At the beginning of a project, I have a rough vision in my mind but often fail to carry this vision until the end. This potential flexibility can be a good thing as the basic vision is sometimes developing into something better, but often it can be a great risk, especially if you work on a complex project. To put it simple: without a map to navigate you get lost. This was a lection Roman always tried to make clear to me, but somehow the thought never put its roots into my mind.

I only really understood his words, when I was painting my Primaris Angels Sanguine. Thanks to my good knowledge of the Warhammer 40k lore and the heraldy of the different Space Marine Chapters, I had a clear road to follow and could invest more effort into the painting itself. In the end, the Marine was quickly finished on a pretty nice level with me smiling all the way. This was the way of painting I always wanted to have. Not the feeling of insecurity and the chaotic jumps between visions... As a result, I adapted a new process into my way of painting: For every project, I create a gallery on Pinterest and collect different artworks to have a guideline, in case I lose myself again. In addition to the digital version, I placed a paper folder in the studio, where I collect my notes and sketches for every project. With this "maps" I felt safe to navtigate and after some long years, Roman´s constant words might have some effect (thanks for your patience!).

About two months ago, I took Sha´un out of the cabinet and decided to finish him. So, I set up my gallery and chose an artwork as a guideline:

I felt much more secure, even as the bust was still representing a big challenge in my mind. But I still kept my flexibility and diverted a bit from the concept art to try a more "colder" version, but somehow it felt strange and boring.

After having another look a my concept, I realized that I needed more powerful colors on my bust. water colors (thanks for the hint Josua!) and inks (thanks Alfonso!) are a good way to quickly power up your colors again, especially if you are a painter who feels safe in his world of desaturated colors. But I realized that powerful colors are much more fun and with this in mind, I pushed Sha´un to his final appearance:

So, what did I learn from all this?

Get to know yourself and your habits in painting. Be honest with yourself and accept your little flaws as they are part of your unique character.

A good preparation based on your character helps you throughout the whole painting process. Make sure to prepare a simple solution for a "problem" you face again and again.

Being flexible in your painting process is important, but be sure to have a solid roadmap/vision in case you get lost.

Learn to analyse your problem. Most of the times you feel it in your guts, that something is not right. Listen to this feeling, lean back, grab a cup of tea or coffee and try to understand WHAT is the reason for your bad feeling. Then, simply find a solution for this specific problem.

I hope, that my thoughts might help some of you to easen their approach towards future projects :) Let me know what you think!

by Josua Lai

This time we talk about the first Release from a new fresh company called "Iter Miniatures"

Alex the man behind Iter Miniatures send me a nice little package recently and we will have a closer look whats inside together now shall we?

The first thing I found is a nice looking black box. Everything seems well put together there is no strange ratling from inside the box which is pretty satisfying for me.

After opening the box you find a bunch of goodies in there. There is a sticker and a card telling you, which copy out of the 200 limited ones you got.

Beside the Miniature there is a really nice looking black resin plinth, but we will talk about him later.
The miniature itself is packed in a zipbag, covered by a really nice linen-type bag. Still, everything feels save and well packed.

The bust itself represents some kind of Goblin Pin up Girl. The description on the Webside of Iter Miniatures tells us, that she is the owner of a tavern called "Golden Gobliness".

Raul Garcia Latorresculpted the bust after an artwork byDavid Haire.
As usually, he did an awesome job in sculpting this bust. He catched the feeling of this artwork spot on with all its sketch charm.

Copyright by Iter Miniatures

Lets have a closer look at the cast itself. The cast I received, is really smooth and all the more simple, up to the complex volumes are well casted. There are some small moldlines back in her hair
but nothing, what a sharp blade and a few minutes can't fix.

I let the Pictures talk for themself now :

The scale of this Goblin Lady is roughly 1/10 and about 65mm in height. My bust came with a black plinth, which will help to present the figure in your cabinet. The form of the plinth compliments the bust really good and has a smooth and nice finish to it.

Closing Words

I have to say that was pleasantly surprised about the quality of the casting and the content of this box. I think this small bust gives the painter some good opportunity to paint a different kind of greenskin than the usual axe swinging Orcboss. The size and style feels right and should be some solid hours of fun.

If you want to pick up Zyana check out the Iter onlineshop and if you have some questions i am sure Alex is happy to answer them.

by Josua Lai

Good Morning Jungle

Today I present you a bust I recently painted.

After coming home from a few mad paint days, Peter and I decided it was time to clean my desk.

I left her behind a while back as I didn’t feel confident enough to paint her. She was quickly mounted on a Plinth and I found my self suddenly painting a few color sketches wild and free with watercolors.

After this step I felt the love and inspiration flooding my brain and I painted her within a few days.

Painting animal related stuff gives me a lot of joy and creative satisfaction at the moment. To find reference pictures often ends in a evening where you only stare at beautiful pictures of animals in awe of the sheer colorvariation and diversity of nature.

I finished the project by spending a lot of time gluing whiskers made out of my own body hear to her snout. Thanks again to Robert who planted this awesome crazy idea in my head

I called this project "Brave" because for me she has a really brave feeling in her eyes and it was a brave step for myself to pick this bust up again and finishing her up the way she looks now.

Without further ado I present you my last bust : "Brave"

Brave Figone

I hope you are enjoying her as much as I do.

Hakuna matata!

Josua

by Roman aka jar

Aloa Jungle,

today our weekly tip is a quick book recommendation.
Of course you got to take into consideration that oppinions on artistic books differ from person to person. You have to make your own conclusions and decisions.

The left book by Betty Edwards was recommended to me by Donal and it is quite the good read with tasks you can fullfill to understand more about color theory. The one to the right gives you tons of color recipes on different topics. If you like working with recipes this is a good book for you!

My recommendation is to buy these books used. They are much cheaper and it doesn't matter if you have a splat of paint or a note by another artist in it. The opposite: It can be really inspiring :)

by Oli aka HonourGuard

Hello,

I hope you all had a good start in the new year.
I wanted to present you some stuff I worked on in the last months. I worked on high quality gaming models, a new little Rackham vignette and on a very big diorama. The biggest project I have ever created. In this post I want to write about the last one.

Dragon Hunters

The project was built as a comission for a client I had create several single models before. For example my Savage Beauty.

But this time we wanted to go for something even bigger. The choice felt on 3x75mm models. Khalgrim from Scale 75, Dragon Huntress and Erynor from Black Sun Miniatures. We talked a while and we decided to add a complete dragon, not only the chopped of head of the Draogon Huntress kit. I decided to pick up Parawn from Mierce Miniatures and do a lot conversion work to find the best position on the base and to get a cool pose for the dragon huntress standing on the body. I had to do a lot of sculpting on the dragon to sculpt a cool swing in the tail, made the body bigger and added more little stings on the tail. On the picture you can see the stuff that I added.

Large conversions on Parawn:

Small changes on the dragon head:

For the base I started with a wood socket from CrazyWenky. And with some plasticcard on the back to have a straight surface. For the base I bought new cork, I bought a lot. I always enjoyed working with cork you can cut it easy and sand it too. The best is it has a very good texture that makes painting easier and pigments and washes turn out nice. The earth and the gaps are filled with Milliput, with added common earth, little stones and roots.

In this step I had clear positions for all models in mind and prepared the positons for the models. Especially for the dwarfen arm that is lying on the stone or the dragon body that lies on the ground. Some people were bit sad about the maybe "dying" dragon. That's why I added another dragon, which is coming out of a cave in the water and I added scratchbuilt dragon eggs to show the future of the dragons there. I think now it is a fair balance from dragons to hunters.

Finished basing with prepared models:

I had lot freedom in creating and painting. For the paintwork I decided to see the models as single models and finish them one by one. But I had the final positions of the base in mind and thought about rough color shemes. This one by one helps to reach the final result. Seperate steps make it easier to climb a mountain. And in the past I had big projects that ended as work in progress. So I think that was the better tactic for me. Beside this display models I had few breaks where I painted smaller gaming models. I enjoyed that and could relax here and than few weeks later I started the next 75mm figure. First one was Khalgrim, I won't say too much about the single models, but want to share the link to the full galleries.

I painted the base before I finished the last model. One of the hardest parts was to create the water effects for the base, wanted to try a different product than usual. This time I tried the method that is decribed on Massive Voodoo from Josua. Crystal Resin from Pebeo with my usual water finish. Acryl gel for waves and some white to paint them and work them out.

Detail shot of the water result:

Now came the greatest moment, add all models on the base and see the complete project coming together. I had to make little changes here and there but the most models fit in the positions I prepared in the sculpting step. Now not much to see, I tried to make good pictures of the finished diorama not easy on such a big piece. Overall I have spend about 200-250 hours in this project.

by Roman aka jar

by Roman aka jar

Train your eye to study statues of all kind.
Don't just walk by. Stand still, look, observe. Not only on the beauty of the sculpt itself, but also on volumes and how they are hit by light and shadow, color variations in different ambiences, weathering and beauty. This is a free gift we can all appreciate, if we start looking and visualising.

As a figure painter you can only learn from it as statues are nothing else than what we paint, just slightly bigger and often with a little bit more history. If you want more inspiration on statues check this article.

If you see a guy with a camera or pen'n'paper in your hometown, spending quite the time in front of statues, it might be me.

by Roman aka jar

Hiho Jungle,
time for another review on a two day private coaching I held back in late 2017.
This time Stefan visited me and his coaching goal was very precise:

As a big Infinity gamer he wanted to make the jump from basic tabletop miniatures to a higher quality of his painting. Several different topics to tackle and that is what we did.

Roman & Stefan, serious painter style

And like always a warm welcome on my students table. Less candy this time :D

Sterfan brought plenty of Infinity models to work on.

Stefan also brought some of his models he painted since his visit of my beginners class. Really cool gaming pieces. Mainly worked with drybrushing and washing. Not bad at all, but of course there is always room to improve.

My teaching plan with Stefan and our topics:

In-depth color theory

Different approaches on how to start a model

In depth look on glazing, layering and detailing

How to create different types of blendings that show a certain material

Painting black

Painting skintone

Introduction into airbrushing

The first thing we did, was a in depth look on color theory with several exercises.
As soon as you understand colors better, painting gets easier. Simple as that. I am not a big fan of recipes anymore, as recipes just lock you in boundaries and do not have anything to do with painting freedom. Of course if you paint armies, recipes are a good thing to unify the look of many figures, but still this can easily be done, even if you know more about how colors work!

Feel free to contact me for your private coaching!I am filling up dates for two day private coachings
at the moment for the whole year of 2018, but still have to catch up
with tons of emails after the winter break. Be sure I'll be back at you
very soon! Additionally check back with the MV roadmap of weekend seminars to certain topics.

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Welcome to the Jungle...

... MASSIVE VOODOO’s jungle, where some apes share their thoughts and ideas around their beloved passion, the hobby of miniature painting and sculpting.

Feel welcome to come and check the jungle for tons of articles, interesting tutorials, creative competitions and the simple joy of happy painting hidden behind every tree. We hope that everyone finds their own banana in here, if not do not hesitate to ask the apes. We are more than happy for you to post in the comments section to help turn this jungle into the lush, overgrown painting corner we hope it will become.